This Too Shall Pass

was no consolation to the woman
whose husband was strung out on opioids.

Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel
for the couple at their daughter’s funeral

though there are better places to be
than a freezing church in February, standing

before a casket with a princess motif. 
Some moments can’t be eased

and it’s no good offering clichés like stale
meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.

When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up
on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens

for a reason: more good tidings someone will try
to trepan your skull to insert. When fire

inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says
about seeing the rising moon. You want

an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down
under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred

sideshow embryo. What a circus.
The tents dismantled, the train moving on,

always moving, starting slow and gaining speed,
taking you where you never wanted to go.

Copyright © 2024 by Kim Addonizio. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 12, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“I’ve offered a bromide or two in the face of someone else’s grief, and one person’s response—born from pain, aimed toward me with rage—got me thinking about the ways we try to offer solace in heartbreaking circumstances and the inadequacy of our attempts. In writing this poem and trying to see things from that person’s perspective, I found myself more in sympathy with it when I considered the facile consolations of certain religious beliefs. Maybe silence and presence are the best we can offer. Time, one way or another, will take care of the rest.”
—Kim Addonizio